Even after nearly 40 years of playing saxophone, Jeff Coffin still thinks of himself as a student.

“There are certain things that I work on that make me feel like I’m in fourth grade some days,” Coffin said. “It gives me perspective.”

Of course, from an outside perspective, Coffin is the master, not the student.

Coffin, 47, played for 14 years with top instrumental group Bela Fleck & The Flecktones before joining the Dave Matthews Band full time in 2008 after the death of the band’s original saxophonist.

On the side, Coffin fronts his own band, Jeff Coffin & The Mu’tet, which performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 17, in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Buchanan St.

“Jeff Coffin is one of the top performers in his field, as are the musicians coming with him,” said Nick Scales, a West Texas A&M University music professor and one of the concert’s organizers. “Jeff is also heavily committed to music education, and that is another factor in the decision to bring him here.”

“Being a professional,” Coffin said, “I’m still a student, and very much so.”

It’s been that way since he picked up the saxophone in fifth grade while growing up in a small town in Maine.

“Pretty early on, I started playing in my director’s trio the summer after my seventh-grade year and making money playing ... (so) I was able to buy my first horn by myself,” Coffin said. “I kind of got the bug.

“I was watching this trailer for a film the other day called ‘Landfill Harmonic’ about kids playing instruments made out of garbage,” he said. “This young girl was talking about music and what it means to her, and how it gives her butterflies in her stomach.

“I thought, that’s how it still feels to me. It really brought a tear to my eye. And these kids have no other possibility but making music out of refuse.

Coffin said his band draws influences from a world of music. The group’s name, Mu’tet, is derived from the word “mutation,” which Coffin said reflects his philosophy.

“It can be basically whatever we want it to be,” he said. “It’s all instrumental music, really funk and odd-metered stuff, with influences of funk and jazz, African influences, Arabic influences.

“The only thing that’s really constant in our lives is change, and music has to continue to morph to continue to stay relevant and alive.”

He takes that attitude seriously with his own playing, too, always striving to find ways of making new sounds on his instruments.

That, in part, led him to learn how to play two saxophones at once.

“I just love the sound of it. ... It’s a thicker sound, if you will, more substantive in some ways,” he said.

“I’m just curious about what the instrument can do. ... I’ve always been looking for different ways through the instrument, and I’ve found that when I would listen to players, especially live, I would hear things I never heard before, so I would steal those things and make them my own.

“The reason live music is so important is because you get those ‘of-the-moment’ experiences.”